Portland Timbers Training Quotes and Notes: Sexy Football

The Portland Timbers put in a full practice session in the rain today, working behind closed doors at the team's Beaverton training facility. The team continued their preparations for the weekend's match against Real Salt Lake in today's training, working on their possession and and patience in building the attack, followed by their usual gym session.

After practice, Donovan Ricketts gave some insight into the team's priorities in practice this week.

We just did the regular things in practice. We practice possession, we practice when we lose the ball how we set up behind the ball, and once we cut silly mistakes out we will be fine.

With the team focusing on possession in training, Ricketts broke down what Caleb Porter wants out of the team.

I think he is stressing good football, sexy football, possession with a purpose. The good stuff.

Darlington Nagbe also talked about the team's objectives in practice this week.

We've mixed in more possession drills, coach has been doing a great job of that, but at the same time continuing to work on what we have been trying to work on in the past, offensively and defensively.

The emphasis on possession has been a common thread this week and the team feels that getting back to their game will pay off. Nagbe talked about what the team needs to do against Salt Lake to get a victory and again possession come up.

Defend well. Defend in numbers. When we do attack, keep the ball and swing it. Last year against them we had some games where we had more possession and could have won the games, so looking back at those games we had a lot of the ball.

Injuries and Absences

No updates to be had here.